'Tis strange how greedy love is in its early days of the past from which
it has been excluded, how jealous sometimes of the point of contact with
other lives in the unknown years which have gone to make up the rungs of
the ladder of life. I was never tired of hearing of her childhood on the
braes of Raasay: how she guddled for mountain trout in the burn with her
brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish
glee. And she-- Faith, she drew me out with shy questions till that part
of my life which would bear telling must have been to her a book learned
by rote.

Yet there were times when we came near to misunderstanding of each other.
The dear child had been brought up in a houseful of men, her mother having
died while she was yet an infant, and she was in some ways still innocent
as a babe. The circumstances of our journey put her so much in my power
that I, not to take advantage of the situation, sometimes held myself with
undue stiffness toward her when my every impulse was to tenderness.
Perhaps it might be that we rode through woodland in the falling dusk
while the nesting birds sang madrigals of love. Longing with all my heart
to touch but the hem of her gown, I would yet ride with a wooden face set
to the front immovably, deaf to her indirect little appeals for
friendliness. Presently, ashamed of my gruffness, I would yield to the
sweetness of her charm, good resolutions windwood scattered, and woo her
with a lover's ardour till the wild-rose deepened in her cheek.

"Were you ever in love before, Kennie?" she asked me once, twisting at a
button of my coat. We were drawing near Manchester and had let the
postillion drive on with the coach, while we loitered hand in hand through
the forest of Arden. The azure sky was not more blue than the eyes which
lifted shyly to mine, nor the twinkling stars which would soon gaze down
on us one half so bright.

I laughed happily. "Once--in a boy's way--a thousand years ago."

"And were you caring for her--much?"

"Oh, vastly."

"And she--wass she loving you too?"

"More than tongue could tell, she made me believe."

"Oh, I am not wondering at that," said my heart's desire. "Of course she
would be loving you."

'Twas Aileen's way to say the thing she thought, directly, in headlong
Highland fashion. Of finesse she used none. She loved me (oh, a thousand
times more than I deserved!) and that was all there was about it. To be
ashamed of her love o